KING OF DOMINOES
A Play
King of Dominoes
was started around 1982 when I was working as a temporary in an office when I
had nothing to do and learned how to use an IBM word processor. Remember that those disks were like a 78 rpm
for songs? Then we changed to a
smaller-disk 3.5 disk? Anyway with that
great computer, it just took me three weeks to finish the first draft. Which was most much better, than the old
typewriters. You could edit manuscripts
when you did not have to change the dialogues.
In 1978, I was thinking of who was I. I knew I was born in Puerto Rico and moved
to New York City in 1953, but after all those years, I became a New
Yorker. My mother, Monse, always liked
to tell stories when she was young so I learned about Puerto Rico was. Then I was interested to write a novel, like
James Mitchell’s big novel, Hawaii.
I started to research in the libraries about my
island, Puerto Rico, and the more information I got, I became more interested,
and I was very happy to learn what my island was, and thank God, I became a
Puerto Rican.
I really do not know what I was. I still have to enjoy that joke, when I was
in a bar. There was a group of
women. One of them said, since she
liked me, “He looks exotic.” The next
woman said, “No, he looks more erotic.”
Eventually, people don’t know where I was from? Some said that I was a Hawaiian or a
Polynesian, and sometimes when I was in Italy or French. And, of course, my
speaking, since it was different. New
Yorkers always ask where I was bornThe title for my novel was titled Boriquen:
A Novel of Puerto Rico. Part of
the research meant I had to visit Puerto Rico again, not as a tourist anymore,
however.
My brother and his wife, Luis and Miriam who live in
Añasco,
always took me to different towns on the west side of Puerto Rico, where my
parents and my older five sibling were born, mostly San German in the
mountains. There I went to visit
Miriam’s godfather who lived in the top of a mountain.
The only way we could visit him meant we had to hike
for about a half-mile and cross a stream (on foot), and hike again to the top
of his mountain. He had 18 acres, mostly with different fruits, vegetables,
herbs, pigs, one horse and many chickens.
And the most important thing was a large boulder on the top of the
mountain from there you could see towns around the area, and his wooden shack.
That became the opening about Boriquen,
especially since Luis lived close to an old man, about over 80, who lived in
another shack with just one acre. His
garden was for herbs and vegetables and some chickens, one pig, and one goat.
The bathroom was outside and his kitchen was also outside where he cooked on
stones.
He was very interesting, liked to tell me what
Puerto Rican was in early 1900’s and before that from stories he had
listened. he had lived in that shack
all his life. The mountain around him
were the owners of rich people, and when they sold the land, which then became
full of houses, he gave him that one-acre for him since he had always worked
for them. He had family, but as always,
Puerto Ricans eventually leave and go to the different towns and cities.
That man became Raymundo Rivera, the most important character in my novel and he became the narrator. Everyone called him “Abuelo.” Unfortually, I had wrote the first chapter about Arawaks, who moved with canoes from Venezuela to find and island to hopefully leave the Carib Indian cannibals. And they found an island they called “Boriquen,” Land of God.
My agent sent the first chapter and information about my novel. Although some publishers were interested, they would not give me money to finish the novel: I had to finish the novel before they would buy it. I kept working to finish, but after 800 pages in just a quarter of the novel, I had to stop. I was depressed and left that novel.
Nevertheless, Raymundo Rivera, “Abuelo” was still here in my soul, and one day, he visit me inside my brain and I had to tell his story in that mountain. And I wrote King of Dominoes for his story.